Like this:

Some planetary systems just aren’t into heavy metal
Date: October 24, 2018
Source: Yale University

Summary: Researchers have discovered that compact, multiple-planet systems are more likely to form around stars that have lower amounts of heavy elements than our own Sun.
. . .Another tantalizing possibility to explore, according to the researchers, is the connection between iron and silicon in the birth of planets. The new study shows a high silicon-to-iron ratio in stars with lower metallicity.

“Silicon could be the secret ingredient,” Fischer said. “The ratio of silicon to iron is acting as a thermostat for planet formation. As the ratio increases, nature is dialing up the formation of small, rocky planets.”

“The physical universe, then, is a kind of language that invites a privileged spectator to decipher it, although this does not yield a single message so much as a superior network of associations.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolism_(arts)

2016 was a milestone year for climate change, marking the first time that the monthly atmospheric CO2 concentration remained above 400ppm for an entire year. This historic event was predicted months earlier by a collaboration of scientists, who determined the 2015/2016 El Niño to be a significant driver of the increase in CO2 concentration. A paper has now been published providing verification and further explanation of the prediction.

Atmospheric CO2 Concentration versus Sea Surface TemperatureThe solubility of CO2 in sea water is well established. Warmer waters dissolve less CO2. In fact, as the oceans warm they outgas CO2 to the atmosphere.

Not well established, though, are the long-term effects of individual ENSO events on SST. Most studies deal with atmospheric temperature and precipitation responses to ENSO. Yet, during an El Nino, a significant amount of heat is upwelled and distributed to sea surfaces as well, through atmospheric and oceanic Rossby waves and through surface winds and currents. I have also yet to see a study of sea surface temperatures that attempts to follow the heat of a significant El Nino, from the upwelling of the warmer water to its eventual subduction. This assumes there would still be heat left at the time of subduction. But since, in one study, Rossby waves from the 82/83 El Nino were still visible after a decade, I would imagine that some residual heat would remain for at least that period.

Also not well established are the cumulative effects of a greater frequency and magnitude of El Nino events versus La Nina events. El Nino frequency and their combined magnitude have been dominant during every period when global SST and atmospheric temperatures have risen over the past 150+ years. The reverse has occurred when the number and magnitudes of La Nina events outweigh El Nino events. Why? If the heat released by one El Nino is not countered by the heat absorbed of an equally weighted La Nina, there will be a net gain in atmospheric and oceanic heat. Temperatures rise as a consequence. And if that heat has not been fully dissipated before another El Nino adds more, the effect becomes additive. Each subsequent El Nino then adds to the prior oceanic and atmospheric heat, raising global temperature. The same holds true for periods of back-to-back El Nino events, or when the magnitude of a La Nina is not countered by an equally sized El Nino, except, of course, the result is a net heat loss and a decrease in temperature.

It would appear similar results can be expected for the growth rate in atmospheric CO2 concentration in response to ENSO events. [bold added]

OCTOBER 31, 2018 REPORT
New model offers more specifics about the swaying of the Millennium Bridge

The researchers discovered that the wobbling of the bridge did not require crowd synchrony, which prior studies had suggested was necessary for wobbling to get started. They also found that crowds syncing up and the bridge wobbling did not necessarily have to happen at the same time. The model also showed that as the bridge started to wobble, the people walking on it widened their steps, which required more energy, but offered more stability.

Why did the London Millennium Bridge shake when there was a big enough crowd walking on it? What features of human walking dynamics when coupled to a shaky surface produce such shaking? Here, we use a simple biped model capable of walking stably in three dimensions to examine these questions. We simulate multiple such stable bipeds walking simultaneously on a bridge, showing that they naturally synchronize under certain conditions, but that synchronization is not required to shake the bridge.

The 2018 ozone hole was strongly influenced by a stable and cold Antarctic vortex—the stratospheric low pressure system that flows clockwise in the atmosphere above Antarctica. These colder conditions—among the coldest since 1979—helped support formation of more polar stratospheric clouds, whose cloud particles activate ozone-destroying forms of chlorine and bromine compounds.

Studies show that coronal holes not only open more frequently when sunspots are absent, but also last longer. During the last solar minimum in 2007-2009, one coronal hole stayed open for 27 consecutive solar rotations. As the sun slowly turned on its axis, that hole fire-hosed Earth with a stream of solar wind almost once a month for nearly two years.

Study: Low-Latitude Coronal Holes at the Minimum of the 23rd Solar Cycle

From both the observations and Potential Field Source Surface (PFSS) modeling, we find that the area occupied by CHs inside a belt of ±40∘ around the solar equator is larger in the current 2007 solar minimum relative to the similar phase of the previous 1996 solar minimum.
. . .
The unusual large separation between the dipole and multi-pole components is due to the very low magnitude of the dipole component, which is three times lower than that in the previous 1996 solar minimum. [bold added]

Czech-mate: See another blockbuster confirmation of the Younger Dryas cosmic impact below.

Cosmic-Impact Event in Lake Sediments from Central Europe Postdates the Laacher See Eruption and Marks Onset of the Younger Dryas

The Younger Dryas (YD) climate episode (∼12,850–11,650 calendar years before present [cal BP]) is an event recorded widely across the Northern Hemisphere. We conducted multiple analyses at high resolution of a YD-age sedimentary sequence from Stara Jimka, a paleolake in the Bohemian Forest, Czech Republic.
. . .
Collectively, this evidence is consistent with the YD impact hypothesis and evidence of one or more cosmic airburst events occurring at this time.

Many of the mines deployed were magnetic influence sea mines that were designed to detonate when they detected changes in the magnetic field.
. . .
Early August in 1972 saw some of the most intense solar activity ever recorded.

A sunspot region, denoted MR 11976, set off a series of intense solar flares (energetic explosions of electromagnetic radiation), coronal mass ejections (eruptions of solar plasma material that typically accompany flares) and clouds of charged particles travelling close to the speed of light.

Those conducting the investigation into the mine incident visited the Space Environment Laboratory at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) near Boulder, Colorado, to speak to space scientists.

The researchers found that introducing the dust grains to a microgravity environment did not lead to more chaos like they expected. Quite the contrary. They found that the reduced influence of gravity allowed forces within the plasma to arrange the dust particles in relatively straight lines – though the grains did squirm around a bit within these lines.
. . .
Electrically charged dust grains are common throughout space, whether it be around stars, in the interstellar medium, or within planet-forming disks. And by learning how these charged particles arrange themselves within a microgravity plasma, researchers are hoping to better understand the foundational physics that governs their behavior. Such research will ultimately help shed light on a range of astrophysical objects and processes we don’t yet fully understand.

Two massive clouds of dust in orbit around the Earth have been discussed for years and finally proven to exist.
10 November, 2018

The Kordylewski clouds are two dust clouds first observed by Polish astronomer Kazimierz Kordylewski in 1961. They are situated at two of the Lagrange points in Earth’s orbit. These points are locations where the gravity of two objects, such as the Earth and the Moon or a planet and the Sun, equals the centripetal required to orbit the objects while staying in the same relative position. There are five of these spots between the Earth and Moon. The clouds rest at what are called points four and five, forming a triangle with the clouds and the Earth at the three corners.

The Jupiter trojans, commonly called Trojan asteroids or simply Trojans, are a large group of asteroids that share the planet Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun. Relative to Jupiter, each Trojan librates around one of Jupiter’s two stable Lagrange points: L4, lying 60° ahead of the planet in its orbit, and L5, 60° behind.

The first rains in centuries in the Atacama Desert devastate its microbial life
November 15, 2018, Spanish National Research Council

The Atacama Desert, the driest and oldest desert on Earth, located in northern Chile, hides a hyper-arid core in which no rain has been recorded during the past 500 years. But this situation has changed in the last three years. For the first time, rainfall has been documented in the hyper-arid core of the Atacama, and contrary to what was expected, the water supply has caused a great devastation among local life.

With charged particles (dust) and a magnetic field, particles will follow magnetic lines of force and if they are charged will repel each other. Will go in helical paths if they have velocity perpendicular to the magnetic LoF. On Earth, end up at poles and cause auroras.
Not clear from article what they were really trying to do with plasma. But interesting to see mainstream moving into Electric Universe territory.

Raises interesting point re planetary ring systems. I’ve noticed in close range shots of Saturn’s that some rings have formed double helixes. They have had helical motion and jostled themselves into helical attractors.

“We’ve completed the most comprehensive and collaborative report on repowering to date. This shows that foundations could be re-engineered to take bigger turbines (for another 30 years), but reusing the foundation generally requires more construction materials and disturbs the soil as much as a new foundation.”

(5 June 2018 – ESA) Data from the international Cassini mission has revealed that a phenomenon called magnetic reconnection can occur on the dayside of Saturn, within the planet’s magnetic environment.
. . .
In the Saturn system, the moon Enceladus and its cryovolcanic activity eject a lot of water vapour and tiny icy dust grains,” says Nicolas Altobelli, ESA Cassini project scientist.

“As this water gets ionised, it fills up the magnetosphere of Saturn with heavy ions that interact with the rotating magnetic field lines. When these lines change configuration, during a reconnection event for example, this plasma is released and accelerated.”

–
A C Osborn says:
November 20, 2018 at 9:49 am
Oldbrew, is Paul Vaughan OK?
[reply] no idea, but you’re not the first to ask
poly says:
November 20, 2018 at 1:14 pm
Yup, I worry PV has lost the plot. He is brilliant but worrying.
–

Hi Guys, Need some help going further with my work on the influence of Jupiter, Mars and Earth’s QBO. I have now pretty well got it in sync. I.e the angular displacement between Jupiter and Mars. And then they go anti sync. I have put together a very amatuerish video of it. A lot of waffle. But at the end of the day i can show that J&M are very highly correlated to the QBO.

Below is a link to a pic of the chart. QBO in orange in JM monthly angular displacement in blue.

The video is pretty amatuerish. But it shows the sources for the data and how i worked it out.

What I am trying to do now is locate the source for the anti-correlation beginning in 1964-5 and ending in 1989. whils using Stefan Bronniman model on the QBO. That is detailed in the video. And please do excuse my video.

Study brings new climate models of small star TRAPPIST 1’s seven intriguing worlds
November 21, 2018 by Peter Kelley, University of Washington

The team found, briefly put, that due to an extremely hot, bright early stellar phase, all seven of the star’s worlds may have evolved like Venus, with any early oceans they may have had evaporating and leaving dense, uninhabitable atmospheres. However, one planet, TRAPPIST-1 e, could be an Earthlike ocean world worth further study, as previous research also has indicated.

As your site links pictures and comments from outside of the EU, this site will fall under Article 13 of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market would effectively require Internet platforms – of all sizes – to proactively filter any content posted by their users, with the goal of stamping out materials that allegedly infringe on copyrights…before they are even posted.

MUNICH, Germany (November 21, 2018) – More than a dozen prominent scientists will be presenting evidence Friday and Saturday casting doubt on the United Nations’ assertion that human activity is causing a global warming crisis. The scientists will be speaking Nov. 23 and 24 in Munich at the European Institute for Climate and Energy’s (German acronym EIKE) 12th International Climate and Energy Conference, which will serve as a prebuttal to the United Nations Conference of the Parties Dec. 4 in Katowice, Poland.

The Heartland Institute is co-sponsoring the EIKE climate conference at the NH Munich East Conference Center which will be live-streamed at EIKE’s YouTube page from 3:00 a.m. to 1:00 pm ET on Friday, November 23 and 2:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 24.

NORTHEAST: It’s going to be a brutally cold day in the Northeast. Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington will all likely see their coldest Thanksgiving morning in nearly a century.

New York may even see its coldest low temperature for the holiday since weather records have been kept in Central Park. In 1901 and 1876, the low got down to 19 degrees Fahrenheit on Thanksgiving.
The low in Thursday’s forecast now is hovering at 17 F right before sunrise.

Gusty winds of up to 30 mph will lead to wind chills in the single digits for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

I also think that the "science" of #AGW will disintegrate before the cooling sets in. I'd say that, over the next 10 years, the unphysical nature of the radiative "Greenhouse" theory will be realized by the mainstream science, and its academic support will collapse. pic.twitter.com/seJvnNVfbx

Reliability of future global warming projections depends on how well climate models reproduce the observed climate change over the twentieth century. In this regard, deviations of the model-simulated climate change from observations, such as a recent “pause” in global warming, have received considerable attention.

Such decadal mismatches between model-simulated and observed climate trends are common throughout the twentieth century, and their causes are still poorly understood. Here we show that the discrepancies between the observed and simulated climate variability on decadal and longer timescale have a coherent structure suggestive of a pronounced Global Multidecadal Oscillation. Surface temperature anomalies associated with this variability originate in the North Atlantic and spread out to the Pacific and Southern oceans and Antarctica, with Arctic following suit in about 25–35 years.

While climate models exhibit various levels of decadal climate variability and some regional similarities to observations, none of the model simulations considered match the observed signal in terms of its magnitude, spatial patterns and their sequential time development. These results highlight a substantial degree of uncertainty in our interpretation of the observed climate change using current generation of climate models.

(163899) 2003 SD220 is a sub-kilometer asteroid and tumbling slow rotator, classified as near-Earth object and potentially hazardous asteroid of the Aten group, which orbit the Sun between Venus and Earth. Its orbital period of 0.75 years means it revolves about 4 times for every 3 of the Earth. It was discovered on 29 September 2003 [bold added]

It’s the kind of alarmist green guff you might have expected from a second-rater like Ed Davey or Ed Miliband. Definitely not from somebody known as one of the best read, most intellectually curious and diligent members of Theresa May’s Cabinet. (Not that this is an exactly crowded field now that most of the talent has left to campaign against her rubbish Brexit plan.)

Miles Mathis writes: SOLAR CYCLE 25 has already begun
First published November 27, 2018

In September of 2014, I predicted in this paper [http://milesmathis.com/cycle.pdf] that Solar Cycle 25 would begin before 2019. That is, in 2018. Since everyone else was predicting 2019 or 2020, and since I was the only one predicting 2018, that may have seemed like a pretty bold prediction. But it wasn’t a raw prediction based on a hunch, a guess, or monitoring the entrails of geese. It was based on simple math and mechanics, as you can see there. So there was nothing very bold about it.

But though it wasn’t bold, it was revolutionary, since I knew it would prove I was right and the mainstream was wrong about something very obvious and near at hand.

British Antarctic Survey: A new way to create Saturn’s radiation belts

A team of international scientists from BAS, University of Iowa and GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences has discovered a new method to explain how radiation belts are formed around the planet Saturn.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A 6.6 magnitude earthquake rocked buildings Friday morning in Anchorage and caused lamp posts and trees to sway, prompting people to run out of offices and seek shelter under office desks.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the earthquake was centered about 7 miles (12 kilometers) north of Alaska’s largest city.
. . .
Shortly after the quake, a tsunami warning was issued for the southern Alaska coastal areas of Cook’s Inlet and part of the Kenai peninsula.

A simple molecule in the atmosphere that acts as a “detergent” to breakdown methane and other greenhouse gases has been found to recycle itself to maintain a steady global presence in the face of rising emissions, according to new NASA research.
. . .
“The absence of a trend in global OH is surprising,” said atmospheric chemist Tom Hanisco at Goddard who was not involved in the research. “Most models predict a ‘feedback effect’ between OH and methane. In the reaction of OH with methane, OH is also removed. The increase in NO2 and other sources of OH, such as ozone, cancel out this expected effect.”

Not surprisingly, this beat period, and the one in the last post, really characterize the definitions of the Sidereal and Tropical years, respectively. and so the residuals (measured in seconds) are really a measure of the crude error involved in these calculations.

No magnetism without electricity…A magnetic field is created by a moving electric current and a magnetic field can induce movement of charges (electric current).
. . .
Electromagnetism is the theory of a unified expression of an underlying force, the so-called electromagnetic force. This is seen in the movement of electric charge , which gives rise to magnetism (the electric current in a wire being found to deflect a compass needle)

An international research team led by Chin-Fei Lee in the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) has made a breakthrough observation with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), confirming the presence of magnetic fields in a jet from a protostar.

The bombshell is contained in a 27-page legal note prepared by the House of Commons EU Legislation Team, which is headed by Arnold Ridout, its Counsel for European Legislation. A highly respected specialist in EU Law, he has previously worked for the EC Commission’s Legal Service and advised the European Secretariat of the Cabinet Office and prior to taking up his current role in 2014, he was Deputy Legal Adviser to the House of Lords EU Select Committee.

The note – marked ‘not for general distribution’ and obtained by BrexitCentral – is dated 26th November and states that the UK-EU customs union which would come into effect if the backstop is triggered “would be a practical barrier to the UK entering separate trade agreements on goods with third countries”.

This month brings the excitement of a comet hunt, as Wirtanen 46P reaches closest approach on December 16th. This is a relatively small comet (1.5km across) with a period of just over 5 years. However Wirtanen is known to produce a relatively large tail for its stature, so it’s definitely one to look out for.

In mid December it’ll be positioned between the Pleiades star cluster and red giant star Aldebaran in Taurus, so will be relatively easy to locate in the night sky.
. . .
I’ve put together a short video to help you locate it over December. Clear skies! [see link below]

On 16 December 2018 the comet will pass 0.0781 AU (11,680,000 km; 7,260,000 mi) (~30 LD) from Earth,[3] reaching an estimated magnitude of 3 to 7.5, making this pass the brightest one predicted, and the brightest close approach for the next 20 years. [bold added]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/46P/Wirtanen
– – –
A curiosity: its perihelion ratio to Earth is 4:Phi³
In Fibonacci terms: (144/34) / 4 = 1.0588235 (Wiki = 1.0587602 AU)
Its aphelion is slightly outside that of Jupiter, by a similar figure: 1.0640935

It’s about to get much more expensive to make your smartphone
By Yomi KazeemDecember 4, 2018

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo)—the world’s largest producer of cobalt—has slammed a three-fold increase on royalties paid for the mineral.
. . .
The hike comes amid ongoing high demand for cobalt as the mineral forms a major component of lithium-ion batteries used in smartphones and electric cars. That demand is not expected to diminish as electric car and smartphone markets continue to grow.

Smartphone giants Apple and Samsung have already made moves to secure long-term cobalt supply from DR Congo, which produces around 60% of global cobalt supply.

Scientists are at a loss to explain a strange seismic event that shook the planet on November 11 and was picked up by earthquake sensors stationed across the globe.

While the cause of this mysterious disturbance remains unknown, it’s somehow linked to an ongoing seismic swarm that’s been rumbling the archipelago of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean for several months – but just what these unusual tremors ultimately signify remains unclear.

“I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it,” seismologist Göran Ekström from Columbia University told National Geographic about the November 11 anomaly.

It’s hard to be cynical enough in this game. I noted today that “Science Communicators,” a recently discussed poorly adapting subspecies, have yet to make mention of this blockbuster paper in Nature Reports one year ago. Specifically, there is credible preliminary evidence contained by the bucketful that there was a catastrophe prior to the Younger Dryas Impact that rained Platinum rich microspherules down on and into heaps of megafauna killed in the blast.

Very interesting stuff! And credibly published by the world’s premier house of science! Yet….wait for it….crickets from the loud crowd.

Two tweets re a farmer claiming his solar farm uses no subsidies till I catch him out. See below for story behind them:

I was asked why my family decided to build a solar farm. The answer is it was the right thing to do and it proved it can be done profitably and without subsidy. 3.66MW itself won’t save the planet, but it is about acting locally while we think globally. This is my family’s start. pic.twitter.com/Pe9KKTTIZu

This farmer in Australia built a 3.6 Megawatt solar farm and insists front and centre in his original tweet that he did it with no subsidies. He gets about 20 cloying, sycophantic replies before @Coconutdog01 challenges him on subsidies. But because @Coconutdog01 says “taxpayers” and not “consumers cross-subsidising” the farmer just side-steps it by saying “No subsidies of any kind in this construction”. Then another sycophantic congratulatory replies before @AussieFaa challenges him specifically on the “RET” which is the Renewable Energy Target which allows for Large Generator Certificates (LGC’s). These are RE certificates, usual thing, free money.

@AussieFaa gets ignored until I come in with the tweet linked above. My tweet has a link and screenshots, nailing this farmer to the floor.

He admits he is after all that he’s selling LGC’s. But over a Twitter battle of 30 tweets he insists they’re not subsidies and won’t correct his original tweet.

Meanwhile his original tweet has garnered 352 retweets and 1070 likes.

However the paper is very important for the data it provides; ie the ‘frequently’ repeated events and their effect that can only be gauged from the carnage trails. The geological ‘carnage’ is even greater but very difficult to find clearly (and were it is archaeology + geology insists on turning a blind eye).

After 41 years on the road, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft has finally entered interstellar space, but it still has a long way to go before it leaves the solar system.

Key points:
— Voyager 2 is the second spacecraft to venture into interstellar space
— It is now 18 billion kilometres from Earth but still within the solar system
— Australian tracking stations play a vital role in monitoring its journey

The spacecraft moved beyond the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun known as the heliosphere, NASA has confirmed.

Its twin, Voyager 1, crossed a different part of this boundary in 2012.

My latest climate review, Energy and Atmosphere Revisited, up for comment:http://brindabella.id.au/index.php?f=EAR
Please let me know if you see any problems from factual errors to typos. I’m thick skinned.

The orbit of 2003 SD220 extends slightly outside of the orbit of Earth.

(163899) 2003 SD220 is a sub-kilometer asteroid and tumbling slow rotator, classified as near-Earth object and potentially hazardous asteroid of the Aten group, which orbit the Sun between Venus and Earth. Its orbital period of 0.75 years means it revolves about 4 times for every 3 of the Earth. It was discovered on 29 September 2003 [bold added]

Nobody can explain why the universe accelerates as it expands. Some believe it may be the result of dark matter or dark energy, while others suggest that it may be the result of a yet undiscovered particle.

After five years and 8,700 mi (14,000 km), a lost oceanographic instrument package has turned up on a beach in Tasmania. The deep-ocean monitoring equipment belonging to Britain’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC) was lost on Christmas Day 2013 in the northern Drake Passage after a failed recovery effort, but was found by a Tasmanian resident after an epic drift clear across the South Pacific.

Washington, DC— A team of astronomers has discovered the most-distant body ever observed in our Solar System. It is the first known Solar System object that has been detected at a distance that is more than 100 times farther than Earth is from the Sun.

The new object was announced on Monday, December 17, 2018, by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center and has been given the provisional designation 2018 VG18. The discovery was made by Carnegie’s Scott S. Sheppard, the University of Hawaii’s David Tholen, and Northern Arizona University’s Chad Trujillo.

2018 VG18, nicknamed “Farout” by the discovery team for its extremely distant location, is at about 120 astronomical units (AU), where 1 AU is defined as the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The second-most-distant observed Solar System object is Eris, at about 96 AU. Pluto is currently at about 34 AU, making 2018 VG18 more than three-and-a-half times more distant than the Solar System’s most-famous dwarf planet.

Experiments by China and Russia to heat up the atmosphere cause concern

Superpowers team up to heat up the ionosphere by over 200 degrees.
PAUL RATNER
21 December, 2018

A series of controversial experiments by Russia and China recently came to light, drawing concern from experts over their potential military applications. A newly published paper shows that in June 2018, Russian scientists emitted high-frequency radio waves in order to affect the ionosphere – the ionized section of Earth’s upper atmosphere that reaches from 50 to 600 miles above. They were able to heat it up by about 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit) while also causing a massive electric spike.

According to a paper published in Nature Communications, a team of researchers from IISER Kolkata have developed a way of predicting the intensity of activity in the next solar cycle (approximately from 2020 to 2031) using data spread over the last 100 years.

Contrary to other calculations, they find that the sun’s activity would not dip during the next cycle, but it would be similar to the current cycle, perhaps even stronger. They expect the cycle to peak around 2024. “This is a unique data driven simulation work,” says Dipankar Banerjee, Solar physicist from Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, who was not involved in this research.

At a workshop at Harvard this week, the team reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice—a spike in airborne lead—marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in Antiquity this week.
. . .
…nearly every unusually cold summer over the past 2500 years was preceded by a volcanic eruption.

NASA’s AIM spacecraft is monitoring a 3000-mile wide ring of electric-blue clouds circling high above Antarctica. These are noctilucent clouds (NLCs)
. . .
If you think strange clouds in the atmosphere over remote Antarctica are of little practical interest, think again. Researchers have discovered unexpected teleconnections between noctilucent clouds and weather patterns thousands of miles away. Would you believe that winter air temperatures in Indianapolis, Indiana, are correlated with NLCs over Antarctica? It’s true. Understanding how these long-distance connections work could improve climate models and weather forecasting.

Ground sightings of NLCs over Antarctica are rare–but only because the population is low. However, the clouds can be seen.